Lina Wertmuller, film director, said of Fredrico Fellini, film director, "He's like a man running along in a black hat and a black coat and he has a box in his hands and in it is a secret. Every once in a while he stops and seems to show it to you, then goes on running."

I read that quote and thought that is how I felt at the end of seeing Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits." It made me angry. What did all that intensity add up to? I thought we had a deal that he would let me see clearly and for as long as I wanted into the black box by the end of the movie.

That wasn't his job. He was one to take the confusion built into life and transform it into beauty and wondering and wonder.

The one thing I knew about "Juliet of the Spirits" right after I saw it was that the colors were beautiful. Countless technical reasons for that, and Fellini used all the technique because he cared about and loved every instant of color in that movie.

What he didn't care about was a viewer being able to contain the experience as if putting a period at the end of a sentence.

--Lina Wertmuller was quoted by Donald Sutherland, who worked with Fellini as the lead in "Casanova," in an essay by Mary Blume in her book, "A French Affair," a collection of essays she wrote for the "International Herald Tribune."